Philippe Arthuys

Philippe Arthuys is a French musician and director born in Paris on November 22, 1928 and died on January 6, 2010 in Toulouse. He is the son of the politician and resistance fighter Jacques Arthuys, and father of the actress Sophie Arthuys, the director Bertrand Arthuys and the composer Christophe Arthuys. It was within the GRMC, with Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, that Philippe Arthuys became familiar with musique concrete. The basic principle of musique concrete consists of working the sound material directly on the recording medium, from diligent listening to the recorded elements, in accordance with the idea, which Schaeffer formulated in 1948, "that there exists another path than notation to access music.” At this period, musique concrete seems essentially intended to renew dramatic music. Arthuys' temperament adapts well to this tendency, he especially seeks the relationship of music with poetry or image, in works illustrating texts by Kipling (The Crab Who Played With The Sea, 1955) or 'Apollinaire (Le Voyeur, for a film by Henri Gruel, 1956). The liberation of spirit and technique thus found influenced the film scores he composed for Jacques Rivette (Paris nous belongs, 1961) and Jean-Luc Godard (Les Carabiniers, 1963). The collaboration between Maurice Béjart and Pierre Henry intensified, and Philippe Arthuys specialized in composing film scores, which exasperated Pierre Schaeffer. Noting that they devoted themselves more to composition than to research, he ended up forcing them to resign from the Group. It will be the end of the avant-garde of musique concrete, and the birth of GRM that we still know today.